1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a radio communication apparatus used as a base station, etc., of a mobile communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a mobile communication system such as mobile telephones, a large number of base stations and exchanges are connected via a network and each base station transmits and receives a signal to and from a mobile station (mobile telephone) via a radio communication channel.
As disclosed in JP-A-2000-36982, JP-A-2000-22626, and JP-A-2001-16159, such a base station comprises a large number of transceivers for transmitting and receiving signals via radio channels and a large number of signal processors for processing signals between the transceivers and a network, the transceivers and the signal processors being connected to each other in a non-block state.
For example, if an attempt is made to connect eight transceivers and eight signal processors directly to each other with metallic paired cables as transmission lines, a total of 128 (8×8×2) paired cables are required because it is necessary to transmit signals bidirectionally between each of the eight transceivers and each of the eight signal processors.
Further, if an attempt is made to transmit a signal at high speed using a plurality of transmission lines between each transceiver and each signal processor, more paired cables are required.
Thus, to connect the transceivers and the signal processors, many lines need to be used for wiring and the number of pins of connectors to connect the boards of the transceivers and the signal processors to a cabinet is increased following the wiring amount.
This introduces not only a problem of a pin bottleneck of each board, but also a problem of the necessity for a very large force (several tens of kg) when each board is inserted or removed.
If an attempt is made to connect the boards of the transceivers and the signal processors through a back panel, wiring of the back panel becomes very complicated and moreover a large number of layers (ten and several layers) must be stacked on each other.